


Möbius Loop (Dirk)

by GemmaRose



Series: Möbius Loop [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Sadstuck, Stable Time Loops, being one of the Alphas sucks ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written from a prompt by my friend Tora.</p><p>"Imagine if at the end of the Alpha timeline the Alpha kids went back in time and picked up the beta kids and thats how it all links in. So Dirk Strider <b>is</b> Bro and Jane <b>is</b> Nana but like, I know they already are but I mean as in, in the beta universe so the Alpha kids do all this fighting and win the game only to create the Beta universe"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Möbius Loop (Dirk)

You sit alone in the apartment you've always known. The city outside is unfamiliar, but you don't mind. Not when it means constant reassurances you're not the last one. Jake and Jane don't answer your pestering, but Roxy does. Roxy always does, even when the nightmares jerk you awake in the middle of the night, biting down screams out of hard-learnt habit and slashing your trusty katana at the invariably empty air.

She answers even when you send her nothing more than a line of gibberish, because some nights your hands shake too hard to hit all the keys right. You wish you had the guts to leave your home and go live with her, partly out of selfish desire to have someone ready to remind you the nightmare is over and partly out of worry for your best friend/pseudo-ectosibling. She still answers every time, but you slowly stop messaging her. It's too painful to see her messages grow increasingly incoherent as she falls back on alcohol again, but you're not exactly one to talk. It might've been one of your fellow rappers, but you can't recall who exactly introduced you. A good chunk of your money now goes to keeping yourself supplied, and you know it's a bad habit (addiction, now, but not really because you can stop if you want to) but you don't want to stop. The drain on your income isn't enough of a bother to outweigh the benefits. You can stay up longer, you don't feel compelled to eat, and best of all when you pop the handful of pills at the end of the high you fall into a sleep deep enough that you don't remember the nightmares.

Jake features prominently in the dreams that torment you when you nod off without your pills. Jake dying, Jake killing, Jake in his stupid skulltop and other computer-clothes standing between the Batterwitch and Lord English. You always wake from that last one screaming and crying, clutching your shirt to make sure your heart is still in your chest and not his bloody hands.

You hang out at the record shop almost every day now, subtly watching the newest employee from behind your shades as he sorts albums and checks inventory. His hair is almost exactly the same, and his glasses and eyes, but his nose is too straight, smile too stiff, and his hands are soft. But if you focus on the top half of his head you can pretend, just for a little while, that it's him. The buzz helps with that, though you keep fiddling with things to stop yourself from going over and asking him out.

You think you're getting better, that visiting the record shop helps, until one day it doesn't. One day, you walk down the street and almost fall over in shock. Gone. It's gone. It was there last night, and now it's not. Not even wreckage. You stare down at the smouldering pit, and almost throw up. Meteor. This is the work of a meteor, and there's only one reason you can think of for why a still-burning meteor impact site would contain a wailing infant.

You swore you wouldn't talk to her again, but you pull out your phone on autopilot. She needs to know. She needs to be told, because you know how this works. You got a child on a meteor, just as a meteor delivered you to your home so many years ago. A lifetime ago. You have to try four times before your fingers are steady enough for the words to come out right.

To: RLalonde  
Roxy, it’s going to happen here too.

\-----

You wanna call him Nick, as a completely ironic nod to Jake's love of horrible movies, but you know that he'll only live if you name him Dave. So Dave he is, your little troublemaker. You practice flash-stepping again, moving Cal like real-time stop motion while you feed him. He tells you the puppet is alive and evil, and you want so badly to tell him he's completely right, but you make yourself laugh and manage to ruffle his wispy platinum blonde hair while telling him Cal's nothing more than a puppet.

He has your affinity for swords, and you make sure to train with him every day. He'll be ready when the meteor comes, he won't be stuck on a scorching planet without means of defending himself. You repeat this mantra in your head while you splint his broken bones and bandage his wounds. No hospital trips for Striders, not when neither of you officially exists.

\-----

At ten he hits his first growth spurt, and you recognise the string-bean physique you hated so much back when you were his age. He's getting better at recognising when you're busy and when you're waiting to ambush him, but every time you think about throwing the fight you remember the joy on his face the first day you met him. He cannot think you are fallible, so every time he gets the upper hand you start flash-stepping circles around him. Until one day he figures it out and steps with you, jabbing at your leg. It's so unexpected that you don't think before lashing out, falling back on battle reflexes honed throughout your childhood. Your kick catches him in the ribs, and a reflexive raising of his arms is all that saves his throat from your blade.

Later, when he's lying in bed with a bandaged chest and a stitched-up forearm, it hits you that he's already figured out what it took you twelve years dodging drones to learn. You smile and take off your hat and shades, flipping open your laptop.

He's on Pesterchum, no surprise there, and you have a short rap battle that starts with swordplay and somehow ends in aliens. Roxy is online as well, but by lurking on a chat with his friend Rose you find out what you were dreading. Your sister's gone, sloshed 24/7, and tonight she's worse than usual. You glance at the locked drawer that holds your needles and pouches, a drawer that hasn't opened in nine years, and shake your head. Your resolve fails when Dave logs off, and after the shot you message Roxy.

After all, who makes better conversation partners than a drunkard and an addict? Because that's what you are now, giving in to the siren call. Just a few hundred bucks away from being one of the pathetic shells you see on the street. Roxy passes out after a while, and you spend the night drowning yourself in self-loathing rap lyrics. You're gone long before Dave wakes up, and you're pretty sure he doesn't even notice your absence.

\-----

You clearly remember swearing not to get involved in his session, but watching him flail about so hopelessly is driving you mad. The meteor is approaching, bearing down on the boy who will befriend you in three short years, and unless you break the most solemn vow you've ever made, everything you've done will be for naught. The training, the tussling, the endless testing and teaching in place of a normal childhood like you wanted for him. You launch yourself out into the sky, calling desperately on powers that haven't worked in decades. And for once, though it burns like fire in your eyes and heart and veins, your godly powers respond. You land on the skin of the falling rock, and the flames that lick at you cannot touch your skin. Not while your blood burns like acid and your lungs sear like overdone chicken. You raise your sword, the one that not even Trickster magic could break or alter, and bring it down with all your might. A rock from the Medium stands no chance against the brunt anger and desperation of a Prince, and it splits cleanly in two. You fall between the halves, glimpsing panicked carapacians within, and the twin concussive blasts knock you sideways. The world goes familiar bright, same as when you entered, and you see the portal just before you pass through it.

You land next to a river of oil and pick yourself up, straightening your hat. There's work to be done.

\-----

You know the Sprite before he shows himself, and that lets you clear your throat of tears before speaking. He pulls the sword from his stomach and you strife briefly, testing his skills. He almost beats you, almost, but he's always left his side unguarded and you jab him there. He keels over, and when he's back up you almost congratulate him. But the words stick in your throat, so you just fix your hat and nod once, managing a small smile of pride. He beams, and it hurts because it should take more than an acknowledgement to make a kid his age smile like that.

Your semi-reunion is cut short by the appearance of an all-too-familiar Dersite with black wings and tentacles, a sword in his hand. His dog-head is missing, but just when you start to think you might actually be winning against the thing that destroyed so much of the other two sessions it happens. There's green fire, the familiar flames of a First Guardian, and the distinctive snout takes form along with his pointed ears.

You look over at your bro's winged self-sprite, and when you open your mouth to say you're sorry Jack pulls your sword out of your hands. Your sword, your awesome unbreakable katana, the only thing left unharmed throughout your whole session and the life since. He rips it from you and turns it around, plunging it through your gut. You fall on your back, and Davesprite's keen of pain sends you into a frenzy. You know he must survive this, because he made that same sound when Noir ripped his wings off during the final battle, leaving him incapacitated by agony until English finished him off. You know this but still the sound of your bro, the one who did his best to set you up for life and whom you raised in return, your baby brother is in _pain_ and you're just lying here with a sword thought your fucking spine.

The sound of the battle moves away, and you may or may not be imagining the orange blur that shoots up like a pillar of light. You manage to not cry, so that when Dave finds you, as he eventually will, he won't know how scared and weak you were in these final moments. You set your face to stoic and close your eyes, fading away to hopefully join your friends in a Dream Bubble somewhere beyond English's influence.


End file.
